Sweatshops in the Sun

Most Americans think that child labor is a Dickensian anachronism that went out with sweatshops, the 60-hour week and the dark, satanic mills of the 19th century. Yet down on the farm child labor remains a national scandal. Hundreds of thousands of children are working in fields all around the country. They labor in the cherry orchards of Michigan, the peach orchards of Colorado, the tomato fields of New Jersey, the bean fields of Oregon. The practice is especially flagrant in California, the richest agricultural state. After visiting San Joaquin Valley, TIME Correspondent David DeVoss sent this report:

Apolinar Castillo is slight for his eleven years. But size is an advantage for Apolinar, who has been a farm laborer since he was five. He can reach down to the squat chili bushes with ease; his nimble little hands are perfect for plucking ripe chili peppers. "He can pick faster than any of us," beams his father Luis, who works alongside him.

Apolinar's stature confers another benefit: when state labor inspectors make their infrequent visits, he can crawl into a nearby irrigation ditch and hide. Last week, however, a sharp-eyed inspector caught Apolinar. If he had ordered him to leave the fields, the Castillo family would have to go without the $2.70 that his average 48 lbs. of peppers a day contributes to their earnings --and one of his five brothers and sisters might have gone hungry.

Apolinar's plight is not uncommon among farm children in the U.S. As many as 300,000 agricultural workers under 17 spend more time in the fields than in school. In California, about 95% of these laboring children are Chicanes and Mexicans. Many receive hardly any education at all as they follow their parents from one harvest to the next. They are in the fields by sunup seven days a week, often in 100DEG-plus heat, frequently near dangerous farm machinery and toxic pesticides.

The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act in general prohibits children under 16 from working in the fields during school hours. In all, 22 states have their own minimum-age requirements. But enforcement offices are woefully understaffed--California has only 14 inspectors--so the laws are often unenforced.

Migrant workers often prefer to keep their children in the fields instead of in school. "I want my son to have a good education, but sometimes it's good for him to help with the work," says Miguel Merino, whose ten-year-old son Ricardo earns about $1.80 a day picking vegetables near Fresno. That togetherness is motivated not just by philoprogenitiveness but also by economic necessity. The average income of families living in California's 26 agricultural labor camps is $3,019 a year, and many migrant families must put every child to work simply to keep alive. Growers generally pay a "piece rate," or fixed fee per basket or pound. Under that system, an entire family can work together, filling the same container and using a single Social Security number.

Many growers do not consider child labor a problem. "I guess we just think different about child labor than most people," says Ben Lopez, director of research for the Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association in Salinas. "Everybody I know thinks work is good for young people. Letting migrant children work is no different from letting your child mow the grass."

Not quite. Dr. Lendon Smith, a prominent Portland, Ore. pediatrician and author, contends that crouching, bending or staying in one position for long periods of time in the fields can prevent normal physical development of children. Only about 20% of migrant farm children remain in school beyond the sixth grade. This spring an estimated 50,000 youths were working the fields in California instead of attending school. "Even if by some miracle we found those 50,000 kids, we wouldn't have the money to teach them," says Leo Lopez, chief of migrant education in the state's education department. "California may have a $5 billion agricultural economy, but to this day it hasn't contributed one damn cent to the migrant education program."

There are four bills before Congress that deal specifically with child agricultural labor. The bills would put new limits on farm work by anyone under 16 years old (with some exceptions), provide extra funds for education programs, and improve health care for migrant children. But parents and growers will probably continue to ignore the laws as long as families must depend so much on a child's extra wages.

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